Right from the start of the European currency union, trade imbalances could be observed in the current accounts and trade balances of the euro countries. The business cycle upswing reaching into 2008 and the strong inflow of cheap money led to a strong economic expansion especially in the...

With the global crisis, the policy stance around the world has been shaken by massive government and central bank efforts to prevent the meltdown of markets, banks, and the economy. Fiscal packages, in varied sizes, have been adopted throughout the world after years of proclaimed fiscal...

This paper is an exercise in dating the Euro area business cycle on a monthly basis. Using a quite flexible interpolation routine. we construct several monthly series of Euro area GDP, and then apply the Bry-Boschan (1971) procedure. To account for the asymmetry in growth regimes and duration...